


Once

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Cryostasis, Loneliness, M/M, disbanded Avengers, letter writing, post CA: CW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wrote a letter to the asleep-in-ice Bucky Barnes, once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once

It’s cold.

 

Basically, it’s cold everywhere. Steve’s entire body is cold, as if he’d never actually been removed from that ice.

Some part of him thinks he should have stayed there. This world is loud. It’s bright. It’s garish in its life, in its color. It still stabs his eyes, sometimes, and it never stops surprising him. This world might have a need for a “Captain America,” but it definitely has no need for a “Steven Grant Rogers.”

So “Steven Grant Rogers” is hiding in a hotel room outside the city with the A/C cranked too high, trying to be alone for a while. He hasn’t been recognized, and he doesn’t know why; maybe it’s that he doesn’t carry himself like a soldier or a hero while he’s on the run. Head down, eyes down, shoulders hunched. Baggy jackets and baseball caps for teams that nobody likes can go a long way in a disguise, too.

He’s bought himself another notebook and filled the first few pages with sketches. They’re lines of faces, wings, hair. Nothing too detailed, but each work reminiscent of its model. He’s got Peggy, Bucky, his parents, as best he can remember them, Sam Wilson in his Falcon suit, and Nat, smiling. His family, or as close as anything’s been to that.

 

“ _I miss you_ ,” he writes in the margin. " _I miss home._ ”

He’s not writing to anyone. What does he have to say?

“ _What’s it like, being in ice like that? Well, I know, too._ ”

 He is writing to someone, now.

 

He’s captured the softness of his face in the previous page, and how the sargeant’s cap used to sit on his dark hair. He flips backwards and adds more strokes to the sketch, fleshing out a cheekbone, the hint of a smile, a shadow on the chin.

When was the last time he saw Bucky smile?

 

“I _t’s cold, isn’t it?_ ” he writes.“ _Of course it’s cold in the ice, but it’s colder than anyone could imagine. Every part of you is still and trapped._ ” Steve still remembers the feeling, like a dark shadow at the back of his mind, as much as he pretends he doesn’t. “ _You’re numb. Completely. And you feel dead. Is that what it feels like for you?_ ”

He adds more crosshatched shadow to his sketch of Bucky, drawing the mouth further up into the indulgent, “i-can’t-believe-this-idiot” smile Bucky used to give him after pulling him from a fight yet again.

“I miss you, you big fat stupid jerk,” Steve says out loud, maybe to the drawing and maybe to the air. He laughs harshly. It hurts.

“At- at least you took all the stupid with you into the” he stops. “Into the ice.”

He puts his head in his hands. Against all odds, they found each other. Thrown from their homes, from their life, and snatched into this century without choice. But they found each other.

 

And then he lost him.

 

“I miss you,” he says again, and he writes it again. His writing is getting messier with emotion.

“ _I miss you, you big fat stupid jerk. You took all the stupid with you into the ice, didn’t you? But you also took something from me. Give it back, Buck. Because I miss you. So come back, for me, alright? Because the world has already torn us apart twice. Let’s not give it the satisfaction of bringing that up to three._ ”

 

He draws a hand down his face, perhaps to wipe some tears away.

“ _I hate losing people, dammit. I’ve lost Peggy. I’ve lost Sharon, in a way, too; I’ve had to run from everyone. I’m a criminal; can you believe it?_ ”

What would the old Bucky say? He’d roll his eyes, punch Steve on the shoulder, and make a joke.

What would the real Bucky say?

It doesn’t matter.

Does it?

Yes. It can’t do anything _but_ matter.

So he writes to Bucky the way he’d talk to him, the way he has talked to him in the past.

 

“ _Yeah, the great ‘Captain America,’ a criminal. Guess the ‘Star-spangled man with a plan’ didn’t have much of a plan after all, huh?_ ”

Steve starts to smile, almost against his will. What would Bucky say if he actually read this letter?

“ _I miss the 40s. It’s strange, how I never thought the decade I lived in could make up so much of my personality. But it does. Or rather, it did. When you get out of that damn tube, I’m showing you everything. This world is different. And I hated it, hated it with a passion, for the longest time._

 _But maybe, y’know, it’s better now. Women can do just about anything men can do, and Peggy loves it. Loved it.”_ He stopped writing. The past tense hurt.

 

Then he started again.

 

“ _Gender’s more open and people, at least in America, are mostly free to love who they like. Nat’s got a girlfriend, for example. And we’re not at war, which is definitely something. Sixty years really changed a lot, and I guess this is as good a future as we could’ve hoped for, even if cars can’t fly… yet._

_Anyway, as I said before, when you get out of the ice, we should see the world together. It’s a loud, chaotic place, but with you in it, it can’t be that bad, huh? If I’m being real honest, when I learned you were in this world with me, it got a whole lot better. Even if how I learned was just after the Winter Soldier had tried to kill me._

_While on that…. He ain’t you, Buck. Couldn’t, can’t, isn’t. Never was. You’re my best friend, maybe the only constant I’ve ever had in my life. Howling Commando, patriot, and loyal to the death. I’m with you ’till the end of the line. You know that._

_End of the line really means end of the line, doesn’t it? These lines, our lives, have stretched on and on and on. Weirdly, one day, our two lines intersected. Our two, out of the many that could have. They intersected back in the 30s and, even weirder, intersected again now, against all odds -- against everything. The world that pulled us apart also pulled us back together. It’s like our lifelines were knotted way back then and no matter how far away you get from the other line, you’re still tied together. And so you’ll come back._

  _And I’ll always come back for you._

_Just so you know that. Nothing is going to make me leave. I may be miles away and you might be under, but I’m thinking of you, pal. While I’m hiding out, while I’m on the run, I’m with you. I’m thinking of you._

_When I thought you were dead, I thought of you every day. I’d visit your exhibit in the museum -- have you seen that? I’d sit through that movie, see your face. Yours and Peggy’s. I'd mourn._

_Peggy brought you up a few times. We talked about you. I still can’t believe she’s gone. I really thought she was the one for me._ ”

 

He stops writing again.

 

“ _Everything’s changed. But you’re still there. Come out of that ice, Bucky. I want to hold you again."_

 

What is he writing? He can write what he wants, right? It’s not like Bucky will read this. He continues.

 

“ _I want to hold you again. Because it’s always been us, Buck. Us against the Nazis, us against the world. Tied like two strings that were pulled through the decades, somehow without fraying. I can’t believe you’re back. And I can’t believe I had to lose you._

_It won’t happen again. When you get out of that ice, when we get the Winter Soldier out of you, you’re never leaving me again, alright? Nat can get us an apartment. We can live in Brooklyn again, or anywhere else if that’s too painful. I just don’t want to let go of you, I guess._

 

 _People can love whoever they want._ ”

 

Why did he write that again? Why? 

“ _To hell with it. I might as well say it, alright? I think I love ya, James Buchanan Barnes. I don’t know in what way but_ ”

The pen stops scratching. Steve curls himself up for a few seconds. Does he? Is he? What is this?

 

" _Yeah, actually, I do know. I do know. I’m damn in love with you, Bucky. For how long, I don’t know. Maybe since when we first met. Maybe before then._

_I think I knew when I held tight to that helicopter. I couldn’t let you go._

  _I think I knew when I said I’d die for you, on that plane, above the water, as the world came crashing down around us._

  _I think I knew when you yelled to me that you wouldn’t, couldn’t leave without me, as the building burned._

_I think I knew when I saw you, strapped to that table, and I knew I’d destroy the world if only so you’d never be that helpless again._

_I think I knew when you fell into the ravine and I wished to god that I had fallen with you._

 

_Guys can love other guys, huh? I didn’t know it then. But I know it now. And there’s no point in denying it; after all, for better or worse, it’s not the forties anymore._

 

_I miss you. I miss home. I don’t know how you feel. I don’t know what the world is or what we are. Am I even Captain America anymore? My shield is gone. And, funnily enough, I don’t even care._

_More than anything, I guess, I want to see you smile again. I want to see you smile at me._

_Come back. Come out of that ice, please. Because I miss you. Because I love you, more than anything else in the world. I love you and I’m in love with you and sometimes it chokes me at night, thinking about the torture and the pain you must have been through._

 

_I love you and I’m in love with you, Bucky._

 

_Come back._

_Please._

  


_Love,_

_Steve._ ”


End file.
